E-Governance News: 24/7/09

INDIA'S ID PROJECT CATCHES FANCY OF US LAWMAKERS
Washington
Mint

With work poised to begin on providing unique identification cards to all Indians, the ambitious project has already caught the attention in the US, with lawmakers asking the government why it could not implement a similar project here.

"So they (India) are taking on a humongous scale something that we have been struggling with for 20 years," John Cornyn, the Republican Senator from Texas, said this week during a Congressional hearing on the country's employment verification system.

Ex-Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani has taken over as head of an authority that will work on the project of giving unique identification numbers and cards to all citizens.

"The predicted cost is £3 billion for 1.2 billion citizens and will replace what right now is 20 different proofs of identity that are available and require in the words of the gentleman who's been appointed to head up this project a ubiquitous online database, and that will have to be impregnable to protect against loss of information," Cornyn said.

NILEKANI REPORTS 45 MINUTES EARLY: DAY 1
New Delhi
DNA

Security staffs at Yojana Bhavan, the Planning Commission office, were in for a surprise on Thursday` morning. Precisely at 10.15am, a full 45 minutes before he was due, walked in Nandan Nilekani, the newly-appointed chief of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI). Even at Infosys, he used to start work as early as 7.30am.

While rumours abound that he will get a plush set of rooms for his office, either at the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building at Connaught Place or at Vigyan Bhavan, for the time being he assumed office at borrowed digs, an office recently vacated by former Planning Commission member BL Mungekar, four doors away from deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

"These are early days, I am assembling my team," he said. His team is expected to have at least 40 private sector IT professionals and will be sourced, according to Nilekani, "globally, both from government and the private sector. I have met many government officials who have innovative ideas, all are welcome."

CAG FINDS DISCREPANCIES IN DATA IN JOB EXCHANGES
Chennai
The Times of India (Chennai edition)

In a strong indictment of the manner in which data is stored in the state's employment exchanges, nearly a million candidates were wrongly given higher seniority, while there were duplicate entries involving 1.23 lakh candidates, an audit report has revealed.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)'s report for the year ending March 31, 2008, reveals that outdated software and lack of controls and security features resulted in a host of mistakes, including premature lapsing of 22,733 registrations due to errors in data entry.

"The computerisation of the exchange continued to function on outdated software lacking in controls and security features. It has been in operation with several deficiencies for the past 20 years," said Shankar Narayan, principal accountant general during the customary annual press briefing. Lack of input controls and validation checks resulted in awarding of higher seniority to 9.31 lakh candidates, duplication in respect of 1.28 lakh candidates and incomplete data regarding the qualifications of 2.07 lakh candidates, the report said.

The system was also wanting in manual and system input controls resulting in a database with erroneous data. For instance, the DOS-based Fox BASE DBMS used for storage and management of data in employment exchanges were not Y2K compliant. As a result, 3,245 dates falling between years 2000-2008 were stored in the system as dates between 1900 and 1908. This resulted in 348 candidates being considered senior-most by the system, and laborious manual intervention was needed to undo the damage, the PAG said.

Lack of documentation, training, backlog of data entry and lapsing of registration of candidates made the system database unreliable and inefficient. The decentralised, unlinked district-level database was unable to handle interdistrict transfer of registrations efficiently, failing to render state-level data when required, he said emphasising that manual interventions gave scope for manipulation.

The state employment department has agreed to use new software to rectify the anomalies, Narayan said, explaining that the government had agreed to take corrective measures based on CAG reports.

SMARTER STREETLIGHTS PLANNED FOR GAMES
New Delhi
Hindustan Times (Delhi edition)

Buoyed by the success of its pilot project on Simon Bolivar Marg in central Delhi, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will now replace the existing streetlights on 67 roads with new, energy-efficient lights. The Rs 34.4 crore project is part of the civic agency's larger plan of improving street-lighting in the NDMC area in view of the upcoming Commonwealth Games.

The project will also be linked to GSM technology, something that the NDMC calls SCADA – System Control And Data Acquisition – that will enable them to control the switching on and off of any streetlight through a centralized command. This will also help them repair the faulty poles in a much efficient manner. The existing lights, officials say, could be relocated to smaller colonies and parks.

E-Governance: 23/7/09

MANY CHALLENGES AHEAD FOR BIOMETRIC CARD
Ritwik Mukherjee, Kolkata
Financial Chronicle

Availability of technology notwithstanding, India will face more challenges than one in introducing one identity card for its citizen. At least that’s what Jolyon Barker, global managing partner (technology, media & telecommunications), Deloitte, feels.

A unique identification card (UID) will be issued to all Indian citizens under a national programme. The government has provided Rs 120 crore in the budget for the project. The project is based on computer application called SCOSTA.

Barker said, “Technology is just an enabler and technology related to biometric smart cards is available. However, there will be a number of challenges that India will have to face while executing it— of connectivity and scale and possibly political challenges — once various ethical issues and issues of individual privacy come up.”

The biometric smart card will have personal details related to retina, fingerprints, credit histories, name, sex, address, marital status, photo, identification mark and criminal background details (if any). These details will be linked to a central online database or repository.

While admitting that the issue of such ID cards is meant to be a move toward better governance, Barker said, “It will certainly be interesting to see how this is finally rolled out.”

In a different context, Barker said that when it comes to technology adoption, urban India is following global speed, but since it started late, it still had lot of catching up to do.

Barker said that smart mobile phones with low-cost model and attractive bundle offers, sharing of such mobile phones for common commercial purposes within a group, linking them with agro businesses, information kiosks (ITC’s e-Choupal or Srei Sahaj) would grow phenomenally.

“In all such cases, interesting contents will play a major role. There has to be a perfect balance between value-added services and utility services in all such cases,” Barker said, adding that this would also foster rural penetration of technology. “Despite the Satyam episode, India has ambassadors such as Wipro, Infosys, TCS in the world of technology. India should leverage that and come up a true global leader in technology,” he said.

 

ING LIFE TIES UP WITH E-SEVA
Visakhapatnam
The Hindu Business Line  The Hindu  

ING Life India here, on Wednesday, announced a tie-up with e-seva, the citizen services arm of the Andhra Pradesh Government, for premium collection.

B. Ashwin, the Chief Operating Officer, ING Life India, said on the occasion, “it will offer a fast, efficient and accessible way for our customers to pay their renewal premium. The network of e-seva centres in the State is a major strength for us.”

He said ING Life was currently present in 234 cities and towns and it had set up 259 branches. The company had appointed over 70,000 advisers to assist the customers and it was doing good business through alternative channels as well. It had tied-up with over 200 co-operative banks across the country.

He said, the renewal premium of the company amounted to Rs 750 crore during 2008-09 and the target for the current fiscal was Rs 1200 crore. The company’s market share was 1.6 percent. There is no proposal yet to make use of the e-seva centres to sell the products. “Today, the arrangement is being activated across the 21 e-seva centres in Visakhapatnam district.

 

INFOSYS WINS EBIZ PROJECT FROM MOC
Mumbai
The Hindu Business Line

Infosys Technologies has announced that it has been awarded the eBiz Project by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India. The eBiz Project is among the 27 Central, State and Integrated Mission Mode Projects (MMPS) under the National eGovernance Plan (NEGP) of the Government.

The scope of this work under this agreement includes designing and developing the eBiz platform, establishing the support IT infrastructure, implementing, maintaining and expanding the eBiz solution and services for the next 10 years.

As part of this project, the company will also undertake training, workshops, promotion and awareness campaigns.

 

LAND RECORDS TO GO ONLINE
Bhopal
The Pioneer

Madhya Pradesh Minister of State for Revenue and Labour Karan Singh Verma on Wednesday said copy of land-related documents would be provided in one day henceforth.

Replying to discussion over budgetary demands of his department, Verma said every tehsil would be provided computers and one inverter. Copies of land-related documents would be provided at night also. He said land records would be made available online soon to ensure transparency. Verma said patwaris would not be posted in native tahsils.

Vacant posts of tahsildars, naib tahsildars and patwaris would be filled up soon. Revenue books would be distributed for free from August 15. Printing would be done in Government Press to save Rs 18 crore. At the instance of Speaker Ishwardas Rohani, he announced that housemaids would be included in the category of unorganised labour.

 

MORE PEOPLE-UT DEPT INTERACTION A CLICK AWAY
Chandigarh
The Times of India

To make all government services accessible to people in their locality, UT administration is in the process of developing a state service delivery gateway (SSDG) that will act as front-end interface to various e-governance initiatives and services across all departments.

The scheme is aimed at ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable cost.

At a meeting convened by finance secretary Sanjay Kumar, consultants for the project gave a presentation on the feasibility and various aspects of the scheme. The general public would be able to download forms through the common service centre (CSC) outlets and submit their applications electronically.

The project is a Government of India initiative under national e-governance plan that involves optimized utilization of existing IT infrastructure and providing basic computing infrastructure to various departments as needed.